Before Him
by lollilolli123
Summary: Sherlock is gone. Not for a little while but for forever. John has to find a way to cope now that the man who dragged him from monotony has died. Set after Reichenbach Fall. Hints of Johnlock.


**Just a little thing I felt like writing out.**

**Warning:** Mentions of suicidal thoughts etc.

* * *

Before him every morning was a struggle to get out bed. I saw no point in it all. There was nothing the world had to offer me. My life had no direction. I had been ripped from the battlefield and placed somewhere I didn't belong. London had never really appealed to me, I'd come from a relatively small town and all the hustle and bustle of city life swept me away and I got lost.

Then he came along. He was so...odd. That's really the only way to put it. I mean, you can't exactly classify him as ordinary, I think that would be kind of insulting.

The first time I met him I thought he was balmy. Then I realized he really was completely and utterly nuts! But he was bloody brilliant too. Sometimes I wondered where I fit in, in his mind. What piece of which puzzle I was. Though I know I would never figure it out and he'd never let me know. He always liked to keep me guessing...thinking about what I said. He'd constantly tell me to just think.

When I first moved in with him I thought life would go on as per usual. It would be the same monotony, the same emptiness, the same feeling that something was not quite right. However he changed all that. He once again showed me the battlefield that I had been craving for. He let me taste danger and fear, showed me that London wasn't as boring and dull as I thought it to be.

I loved it. I loved those moments, I wished we could have had more of them. The afterglow of a case well solved, surviving another close shave, giggling like children outside the flat, the tea and the experiment -oh- the experiments. They drove me up the wall and they were _everywhere_.

They all made us what we became. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Together we made a smashing team. We solved case after case, wading through them like water. Then he came along and tried to drown us. In the end he succeeded.

Sherlock jumped off of _a building_ and I was left with an empty flat, a jar of who-knows-what in the fridge and a skull that I had grown oddly attached to. It was all too much for me to handle. But what was I do? Sherlock wasn't around to drag me off to streets of London to distract me. To show me the more sinister side of a city I thought I was starting to understand. No, there would be no more of that, no more case solving. Not by me, nor by anyone in this flat.

I sunk back into depression, my PTSD which had long been dormant emerging once again causing me to wake up late into the night gasping for air, crying out as memories I had learnt to forget flashed behind my eyelids. I withdrew from people. I couldn't bear to see the expression upon their faces when they looked at me. Even Mycroft stared at me as if I were some stray who's owner had died.

Avoiding people was doing me some good. It gave me time to collect my thoughts. I still believed in Sherlock Holmes. No matter what anyone may say. If someone were to insult him in my presence I'd sock him.

One day, while avoiding Mrs. Hudson I ventured down to a local cafe and ordered a cup of tea before grabbing a newspaper and sitting down with my order. The tea back at the flat was much better but Mrs. Hudson was pressuring me to move some of Sherlock's stuff out because it was taking up so much space. To be honest I just didn't even want to think about it. It was then when I noticed someone else who looked lonely and sad. I didn't know what possessed me to do it but I approached them.

This was probably the first time I'd initiated a conversation in months. I cleared my throat. "Hello," I said.

They looked up from the book they had been reading. "...Hello," they replied awkwardly, eyes barely even leaving the page.

Suddenly I very much regretted this decision. I'd thought that they looked like they could use a friend but obviously not. "Oh...ummm..." I drawled, mentally slapping myself.

Suddenly they bookmarked the page, appearing to have reached a new chapter. "Yes?" they asked.

"Well...I just thought you looked a little...bored over here all by yourself and...well I thought you could use a friend?" I said.

They laughed. "I'm Mary Morstan, please sit," they introduced themselves, gesturing to the empty seat across from them.

I did. "John Watson." I replied.

I'd heard a saying before that could always find people like you. You saw yourself in them and somehow instantly new that they somehow felt as you did. That was what I found with Mary. Her husband had passed on four months and six days ago. Illness was the cause of it she said. She still wore her wedding ring on her finger, twisting it occasionally, playing with it lightly as if she wanted to be assured of it's presence.

"So John, what brought you to this cafe on this fine afternoon?" she asked in her best attempt at being cheery after her dark and tragic telling of how illness slowly took her husband.

It came to me that I simply could lie to her but she had been so blatantly honest with me that I found I didn't want to. "Mrs. Hudson tried to get me to move some of Sherlock's things out the house because they're taking up to much room."

"Why?" she asked lightly.

"Because Sherlock's dead."

"I would like to know what happened, if you feel like telling me, I've found the more you talk about it the easier it gets and I told you about my husband, this only seems fair. So John, what happened to Sherlock? How long has he been dead?" Mary questioned.

"Two...Two and half months. He committed suicide, he jumped off a building and I watched as he fell..." I stumbled over my words. It was so difficult talking about him. Talking about him like he wasn't here anymore. Almost too difficult. But Mary was kind, she understood - better than everyone else and I couldn't quite understand why. Shouldn't my friends knowledge of how I was feeling surpass that of someone I'd met not an hour ago?

"Oh...oh my...I read about that in the papers, I thought the name Sherlock rang a bell, " Mary's hand flew to her mouth, "I shouldn't have said that, I'm dreadfully sorry, John."

A pained look passed across my face, "It's fine...you're not the first to say it. 'Suicide of a fake genius' and all that rubbish. It's not true you know, the papers were just looking for their next headline, Sherlock was a good man. I believe in him," I said abrasively.

Mary slid her hand across the table to hold my shaky, clenched fist. I was so sick of those newspaper articles, spreading lies like diseased rats. They'd even had the nerve to try and interview me! As if I'd talk to any one of them, save to clear up Sherlock's name.

When I had calmed myself I rose from my seat. "I'm afraid I have to go now, I wish you well Mary."

Just as I was walking away I heard her call out to me, "I'll be here again tomorrow! At 3 o'clock, if you're not doing anything come meet me!"

I kept walking.

* * *

When I awoke the next day I couldn't get out of bed. Or rather the very thought of me getting up to face the day was devastating. I rolled over and attempted sleep once again before finding I was not able to achieve it. That still did not make me get up out of bed. I sighed. My therapist told me if I was feeling like this to try and at least do something, go for a walk, set a goal etc. etc. but I found that the very thought of it was tiring. I was just so tired all the time.

"The world doesn't need me to function," I said to myself, "so why bother even trying to participate in it?"

When 3 o'clock drew near it struck me that Mary Morstan would be waiting for me in that little cafe on the corner. I didn't want to disappoint her so I dressed, ate a piece of toast and simply stared at the flat for a few moments. Almost everything was as undisturbed as the day Sherlock took that fatal leap, save for a few spots. Nearly everything reminded me of him, but that was good, because I could never forgive myself if I forgot Sherlock. Bringing myself out of my daze I closed the door behind me and made my way to the cafe.

Mary was already seated and waiting when I arrived. "John," she greeted, "you look awful."

I laughed for what seemed like the first time in forever. No one else seemed to have the guts to tell me the truth but apparently Mary Morstan did.

I sat down and passed my afternoon with her. It wasn't a happy, giggly affair but it wasn't laced with tragedy either. We spoke to each other as if we weren't both broken. As if we weren't tired of other people trying to pick up the pieces for us. We enjoyed talking like we were real people. Like we weren't afraid of shattering the other by saying the wrong thing.

This is how my days melded into one big clump of sleep, wake up, try and pass time, meet up with Mary, go home, avoid using my gun that night. Sleep, Wake up, Mary, Night, Gun. Sleep, Mary, Gun.

However my schedule soon crumbled. Mary told me she was going back to work soon. She couldn't keep supporting herself if she didn't. She wasn't like me, she didn't have her flat paid for Mycroft or her groceries bought by Mrs. Hudson. Sometimes it disgusted me how much I relied on them but every time I went to the clinic to ask for my old job back I just stood there. Willing myself to go in.

"That's..." I cleared my throat, "Ummm great."

"No it isn't John, don't be ridiculous," Mary scoffed, "I don't want to go back. Not now."

"Didn't you just say you had to?" I replied.

"I do but still..." Mary began to gnaw the edge of her lip and that was the end of that. She was going back to work.

* * *

I stared in the mirror. "You repel me. You rely on everyone else to support you because you can't even support yourself. You used to be a good man John Watson, what happened there? Now you're a disappointment, a leech to society. You take and you take and you give nothing back. Start giving back John Watson or you're not needed anymore. No one needs a broken doctor. They need a doctor, a proper one."

That day I smoothed down my hair, changed my clothes and asked for my old job back.

Going back to work for the first time was hard...almost unbearable. My people skills had become rusty and more than once I had made a verbal blunder. I would also often drift off in the middle of saying something, struck by a thought or image that passed through my mind.

At the end of the day I went home and stared at my gun for a good three hours, comforted by the thought that it was still in my possession. I had a one way ticket out if I ever needed it. I was in control of my own situation, I could handle it. If I ever couldn't handle it then my golden ticket was sitting on the kitchen table, awaiting my return.

* * *

"John, maybe we could start by getting rid of a couple of stacks of those papers that are just lying around?" Mrs. Hudson enquired.

"No," I replied firmly.

This was still my flat and if I chose to keep Sherlock's papers sitting there then they would damn well stay there. Everything would stay exactly where it was before.

"But they're taking up so much space, and no one's even using them!" she exclaimed.

"Mrs. Hudson, your concern for how tidy my apartment is, is touching however that's exactly what it is, _my _apartment and what I chose to do with it is up to me."

Mrs. Hudson huffed and made her way back downstairs, another battle lost. I didn't know why she even tried anymore. I'd told her time and time again not a single thing of Sherlock's was to leave this apartment, in a garbage bag or otherwise.

* * *

Months blurred together and all too soon the anniversary of Sherlock's death rolled round. I thought I could cope.

I called in sick to work immediately; visited his grave, brought fresh flowers, tidied off his tombstone and left. Back home I stared mindlessly at the TV. Sherlock was gone. As in gone. Never coming back. I'd never solve another case with him again. Never see him smile, or smirk, or frown. The true reality dawned of the situation dawned on me. Eventually I'd move on, stop thinking of him daily, stop making two cups of tea, stop shaming myself for not moving on, start wondering why the stuff that cluttered up the apartment had any meaning, start asking myself what I found so great about Sherlock Holmes, start forgetting.

I didn't want that. I didn't want any of that. My breath came in short gasps and my head spun. Suddenly my gun was in my hands. Then pressed against my skull.

I eased the safety off.

I slowly squeezed the trigger.

* * *

**I put this as a oneshot but it really could be a twoshot...idk. Tell me if you want another one.**


End file.
